Willie Johnson
Willie Johnson is a playwright and essayist based in New York City. His writing has appeared in a variety of publications including The New York Times, The Nation, and Thomson Gale's Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. His one-act play "Ice Cream Man" won the Audience Favorite award at the 2015 Unchained Festival in New York, and his play "Blue Balls" was a finalist for the 2016 LaBute New Theater Festival in St. Louis. His newest play, "Age of Extinction", will premier at Verso Loft in Brooklyn in May 2017. He is a proud co-founder of New York's Socialist Theater Alliance.
Gina Kamentsky
Gina Kamentsky’s first animated film was produced when she was 12 using a Bell and Howell 8mm camera and drawing on recycled computer paper. Since then she has been passionate about creating animation and has progressed through a variety of narrative and experimental forms. In her most recent work she draws and paints images directly on film stock, a technique known as direct animation. Her experimental films explore relationships between surface, representation and rhythm. Her animation work has screened at numerous festivals including Annecy, Ottawa International Animation Festival and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. In addition, she is the co-director of the short film “Traffic Stop” for POV. Which was recently nominated for an Emmy.
http://ginakamentsky.com
Christopher Goddard
Christopher Goddard is a composer and pianist currently based in Montreal. As a composer, Christopher Goddard has collaborated with NYO Canada, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, l’Orchestre de la Francophonie, TAK Ensemble, andPlay duo, and NOISE-BRIDGE duo. He was selected for the 11th International Forum for Young Composers with the NEM, and has participated in the Wellesley Composers Conference and the NAC Young Composers Program. His work has been recognized by the CLC’s Friends of Canadian Music Award, the SOCAN Foundation Young Composer Awards, and the Prix Collégien de Musique Contemporaine.
He was recently selected as the RBC Foundation Composer-in-Residence by NYO Canada, for whom he composed a new orchestral work that was premiered in Lisbon on their 2016 summer tour. As a performer and advocate of contemporary music, Christopher Goddard has presented dozens of premieres by his colleagues, appearing with new music groups such as Ensemble Moto Perpetuo, Columbia Composers, the Wet Ink Ensemble and others. He has participated in the Samos Young Artist Festival, the Avant Music Festival in New York and was a member of the 2013 Lucerne Festival Academy. Starting in September 2017, he will serve as Artistic Director for Ottawa New Music Creators. Christopher Goddard has studied composition with Pierre Jalbert, Karim Al-Zand, Chris Paul Harman and Brian Cherney. Piano studies took place with Chris Oldfather, Anthony de Mare, Kyoko Hashimoto and Nicole Presentey. He holds degrees in composition, contemporary performance, and theory from the Manhattan School of Music, Rice University, and McGill University. He is currently pursuing a Doctorate in composition with Professor John Rea at McGill University.
http://www.christophergoddard.com
Emily Lobsenz
An award winning writer-director, Emily’s work spans fiction, documentary and interactive series. Emily’s most recent films include SANDORKRAUT, a festival favorite and selected as a New York Times Op-doc; the multi-award-winning magical realist film, THE NEVER BELL created with hand-crafted puppets; and her lyrical feature SONG OF THE BASQUES which explores the mystery us Basque culture. She’s currently in preproduction with a feature BLACK COMEDY she wrote set in Atlanta and shooting an interactive sports-tech series BODY HACKING. Emily’s TV pilot INVISIBLE ISLANDS recently won the TFI-SLOAN prize. Her works been recognized by Tofte Lake, The Jerome Foundation Tribeca Film Institute, The Smithsonian Institute, NBC's Talent Showcase, ITVS, Marble House, Stowe Story Labs, Brooklyn Arts Council, Fulbright Foundation and numerous international arts council. Emily’s studies in Literature, Fine Arts and Music at Amherst College initially sparked her interest in Film. She went on to earn her Masters at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and then began her career as a cinematographer and production-designer in Europe. Emily is partnerships coordinator for Film Fatales plays the cello, speaks Spanish, French and Basque, and is an elite triathlete and long-distance runner.
Mackenzie McBride
Mackenzie McBride is a Brooklyn based playwright and teaching artist. Her plays have been produced by ESPA at Primary Stages, Taksu Theatre Company, Durango Arts Center, The New York Indie One-Minute Play Festival, and Typed Out Productions. Recently she was named a Top 5 Finalist for the Durango Arts Center 10-Minute Play Festival and a "Risky Playwright of the Year" at The Cutting Ball Theater in San Francisco. In February 2017, her play "The Telling and Re-Telling of Lucy and Owen" was featured as a part of the Playhouse on Park's new works reading series in West Hartford, CT. Her other plays include "A Lovely Damaged Quality", "Lab Rat", "Advent of Loss", "Bitten", "Sad Words", "SHE", and "Kitchen Lords." In addition to her playwriting, Mackenzie teaches theatre, storytelling, and spoken word at public schools all across NYC's five boroughs. Mackenzie is a graduate of Cranbrook Kingswood (Class of 2008) and of The Florida State University's School of Theater (Class of 2011). A proud mid-westerner, she was born and raised in Ortonville, Michigan.
www.mackenziemcbride.com
Kimi Takesue
Kimi Takesue is an award-winning filmmaker and the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Film. Other honors include a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship, two artist fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), a Kodak Cinematography Fellowship, a CAAM Fellowship (Center for Asian American Media), and grants from ITVS, Ford Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), The Arts Council of England and artist fellowships at Marble House, Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Takesue’s recent feature-length documentary 95 AND 6 TO GO (2016) was nominated for the prestigious 2017 European Doc Alliance Award. The Doc Alliance is comprised of seven important documentary festivals in Europe: Visions du Reel (Switzerland); DocLisboa (Portugal); CPH:DOX (Denmark); Dok Leipzig, (Germany); FID:Marseilles (France); Against Gravity (Poland); and Jihlava (Czech Republic). Each festival nominates one film for the distinguished international award. 95 AND 6 TO GO was nominated by DocLisboa. 95 AND 6 TO GO had its world premiere in the international competition at DocLisboa (Portugal) and North American premiere at DOC NYC in New York City.
Additional international competition screenings include: BAFICI-Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (Argentina); Krakow International Film Festival (Poland) and CAAM Fest. in San Francisco. Additional screenings include CPH:DOX (Denmark); RIDM: Montreal International Documentary Film Festival; Hawaii International Film Festival, Sarasota Film Festival and the Los Angeles Asian Pacific International Film Festival. Takesue’s critically acclaimed Ugandan feature-length documentary WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME? (2010) was commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam and premiered at the festival, followed by screenings at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Los Angeles Film Festival, and festivals in Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Uganda, Poland, Portugal and India, among others. WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME? was theatrically released by Icarus Films, was a Critics’ Pick by Time Out-New York and LA Weekly and was described by Variety as, “Beautifully meditative...an uplifting observational documentary that plays on seeing and being seen.” Takesue’s films have screened at more than two hundred film festivals and museums internationally including Sundance, New Directors/ New Films (MoMA & Lincoln Center), Locarno, Rotterdam, SXSW, Mar del Plata, Vancouver, Thessaloniki, London’s ICA, Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) and have aired on PBS, IFC, Comcast, and the Sundance Channel. Film honors include SPIRIT OF SLAMDANCE AWARD, Slamdance Film Festival; BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY, Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema; ITVS Futurestates AUDIENCE AWARD; GRAND JURY PRIZE, Brooklyn International Film Festival; GOLD MEDAL & GRAND JURY PRIZE, Brno International Film Festival, Czech Republic; JURORS’ CHOICE AWARD (1st place), Black Maria Film and Video Festival; BEST NARRATIVE SHORT, San Diego Asian Film Festival; and the GOLDEN REEL: NEW VISIONS AWARD, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. Kimi Takesue has served as a selection committee member for MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight as well as a nominator for the Rockefeller Media Arts Award. She has also served as a panelist for the New York Foundation for the Arts and will be a juror at the upcoming BAFICI-Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (Argentina). Her films have circulated widely in educational settings and are used regularly in colleges and universities in various courses including Cultural Studies, Asian-American Studies, Cinema Studies, Women’s Studies, and Film courses. Takesue's films are distributed by Women Make Movies and Icarus Films. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Arts, Culture, and Media at Rutgers University-Newark.
www.95and6togo.com
Audra Wolowiec
Audra Wolowiec is an interdisciplinary artist whose work oscillates between sculpture, installation, text and performance with an emphasis on sound and the material qualities of language. Her work has been shown internationally and in the United States at MASS MoCA, Socrates Sculpture Park, Art in General, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, The Poetry Project, and Center for Performance Research. Featured in BOMB, Modern Painters, The New York Times, Sound American, CAA Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, and reductive journal. Recent residencies include Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The Wassaic Project and Complex Systems Art and Physics Residency at the University of Oregon. She currently teaches at Parsons School of Design and was the inaugural Artist Educator in Residence at Dia:Beacon.
http://www.audrawolowiec.com
Slinko
Slinko, Economy of Means, 2017. Video still courtesy of the artist.